James Traub visits the front lines in the class war over standardized testing in a cover story in this week's New York Times Magazine. First he reports from a low-achieving school in Mount Vernon, New York, where he observes "test preparation with a vengeance," but, he notes, test prep that seems to work. The teachers talk about showing their eighth-graders how to restate a test question, to take coherent notes, and to distinguish between a detail and the general statement it supports. This kind of activity-drilling kids in the cognitive skills that better-educated children may have picked up on their own-isn't pretty, but seems to be effective. One Saturday morning, Traub attended a voluntary test prep session offered by the school and found that about a third of the eighth grade showed up and that the students even seemed to enjoy the activities. Traub reviews the research evidence showing that standards-cum-testing can cause improvements in student achievement, but he perceptively notes that the issue of testing is so ideological that it will not be settled by data. Next, Traub journeys to Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb where parents, teachers, and administrators are so confident that their schools are excellent that they have made a collective decision to pay as little attention to the tests as possible, and kids continue to enjoy long units on Shakespeare uninterrupted by test prep activities. These parents insist that, as bad as testing is for their children, it is even more harmful for disadvantaged children, although, when pressed, they admit to having little personal contact with or true knowledge about inner city schools. In Traub's final stop, Mamaroneck-equidistant from Scarsdale and Mount Vernon-the schools are not as good as Scarsdale's and the state tests are not as easy for parents to dismiss. In towns like this, he judges, testing brings great anxiety to parents, who are concerned about the good books being squeezed out by test prep but also concerned about the scores their children's schools receive on the test. Here they teach to the test but wish they didn't have to, and the reader is left to wonder what would happen if they just kept teaching Shakespeare instead of preparing for the test.
In this week's Washington Post, Jay Mathews looks more closely at the view that disadvantaged kids need to be drilled in the basics while middle-class students benefit from more creative, project-based instructional techniques. While practitioners may insist that their low-income students get more from a structured approach, experts interviewed by Mathews charge that tailoring teaching methods to kids this way is classist, if not racist, and creates a culture in which disadvantaged children are not held to the same standards as others. The article concludes with an observation by Fairfax County superintendent Daniel Domenech that he has seen schools with disadvantaged children succeed using either approach, and that what matters is that teachers know what they are doing and believe in it.
Great teachers and schools may be able to succeed in a range of ways, but that doesn't mean that all approaches are equally effective. A forthcoming study of teachers in high-poverty schools conducted by Abt Associates finds that effective teachers run highly structured classrooms and make extensive use of straightforward drilling in basic skills along with more creative work. High-performing teachers were also found to be more knowledgeable about state and district academic standards and tests and to have deviated from standards developed by groups such as the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics by having students do individual worksheets, among other things. The research, presented at last week's American Educational Research Association conference, was funded by the Education Department and will not be released publicly until it has undergone a formal review by the Department.
"The Test Mess," by James Traub, The New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2002.
"In Schools, No Points for Styles," by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, April 9, 2002.
"Researchers: Structured Classes Help Poor Kids," by Hannah Gladfelter Rubin, Education Daily, April 11, 2002. (available only to subscribers)